CONNECT Basic psychology/mobility insights for secondary school age target group

1. CONNECT Basic psychology/mobility insights for secondary school age target group 4-5 September 2008 – Maribor, Slovenia Raf Canters – Mobiel 21

2. Content Children and mobility Adolescents and mobility  Adolescents are not children ! Typical awareness approach to young people Important issues to approach young people  The notice we use in CONNECT This presentation continues upon the ‘CONNECT insights for children’.

3. Children and mobility Remember CONNECT insights on children of primary school age? Children ≠ small adults Move in and through traffic in a different way, different perception, different way of thinking, different way of handling, but ready and eager to learn! Learn most of all by imitating behaviour Role of champions, teachers and most of all parents! From learning in a classroom over a safe and protected environment to learning in real life situations and in real traffic.

4. Adolescents and mobility Well, this is no longer the case for adolescents… This group is indeed like adults concerning a lot of traffic and mobility behaviour! The older they get, their cognitive and physical skills and capacities level that of adults. Yet they lack experience in many transport modes! This is usually seen as motorised means, but for our goal: they also lack experience in sustainable transport modes! Whereas children are much influenced by role models such as parents and teachers, adolescent mostly aren’t. Though they still might look up to professional role models (like a sportsman/woman).

5. Adolescents and mobility (2) Depending on subcultures (like a ‘jock’, like ‘skaters’, like ‘scooterboys’) a role model might have more influence but what is crucial and much more important for them (both in subculture as just peer groups) is: the company they keep. A key issue in adolescent mobility is peer behavior! Obviously parental socioeconomic status is also positively associated with adolescents' choices.

6. Typical awareness approach to young people Safe driving Speed Drugs and driving

7. Typical awareness approach to young people (2) Content • Focus on motorised driving, hence aimed at the elderly group • Focus on traffic safety and traffic rules Why? • Traffic unsafety and parental fear Facts • Age group 15-24 year makes up one third of the traffic casualties. • Mortal casualties are 50-90% higher at this age group than population at a whole and are the number one death cause for this group. • Safest are bus, tram, train (considering mortal victims) followed by moped and motorcycle (both actually quite dangerous, but little users) foot and bike (many users and most often by bike-car confrontation) Remember: lies, damn lies, and statistics

8. Typical awareness approach to young people (3) Method • Pointing out the finger: do this, don’t do that “You gotta learn to listen, listen to learn” - Based on cognitive schemes like this:

9. Typical awareness approach to young people (4) Our focus within CONNECT Issues on content • Soft modes and sustainability seldom an issue • Age group between 12 and 16 most often a wasteland Issues on method • “We're not just kids, to say the least, we got ideas to us that's dear” • Based on cognitive schemes like this: This scheme is a psychological or pedagogical learning process approach that some people used in/since the ’70’s. This is a computer model !!!!

10. Typical awareness approach to young people (5) Please keep in mind

11. Important issues to approach young people Although poor at some times (just like adults) knowledge is not the main issue! Research with 12-15 years showed that group conformity was a huge reason not to comply to rules or insights. As age comes, knowledge, insights and skills improve, yet attitude and actual behaviour gets worse and willingness to take risks increases (Vermeulen, Katteler, et al., 2003; Meire & Vleugels, 2004). Please: this does not mean risk full behaviour is thé cause of accidents, there are other factors (30 kph zone, separate bike lane) and users (a car-bike crash versus a bike-bike crash) as well as a traffic system that often is not adapted to children and young people as it is car-centred.

12. Important issues to approach young people (2) Reaching out to adolescents in an effective way is difficult. Especially effective and supportive non-instructional influences (meaning: not associated to teaching, lessons, education in a narrow sense) are hard to find. Coordinated non-instructional influences may well be essential to achieve a sustained mobility attitude improvement. It may, of course, not be realistic to believe this attitude will be enough. Likewise it is not realistic to put all your bets on ‘traffic education’ in order to really get through to young people who are at an age of experimenting and checking out boundaries. Research on prior (often school-methodical) educational and traffic campaigns indicates that campaigns that focus on repression or fear emotions or have a scent of ‘we know what is good for you’ as well as campaigns that are strongly centrally steered often have little impact to this age group especially on anything that stretches the short term.

13. Important issues to approach young people (3) once again: PEER PEER PEER PEER PEER

14. Important issues to approach young people (4) Research project ‘Transport dependence and transportation autonomy of children’ Traffic and social safety concerns children are often restricted in their mobility or accompanied on their journeys but a growing independence is expected from children, especially from the age of 10 years onward, and certainly as a need during the transition to secondary school age sadly enough, several studies indicate that children are progressively more being driven by car and that the age for autonomous journeys increases.

15. Important issues to approach young people (5) Learning theories and principles of behaviour modification it is easier to do what you are doing than it is to learn something new or to change your behavioural patterns specially when the new pattern of behaviour must replace or compete with former patterns of inactive behaviours that are often satisfying (e.g. dad will bring me), habitual behaviours (e.g. the car is just outside the door), or behaviours cued by the environment (e.g. the presence of two cars in a family). hence it is important to allow children to experience safe and environmental friendly modes of transport, to allow them to grow (up) in a particular behavioural and attitude setting, at least if we want them to make the choice in favour of sustainable transport modes as adults (sowing the seeds…).

16. Important issues to approach young people (6) Perceptions of mobility change form child to adolescent while the younger children more often speak about the pleasure of the trip itself, the older ones from the secondary school more often stress the pleasure of the destination

17. Important issues to approach young people (6) Perceptions of mobility change form child to adolescent while the younger children more often speak about the pleasure of the trip itself, the older ones from the secondary school more often stress the pleasure of the destination the (somewhat) older children already have more experience in being on the move. The trips themselves usually don’t cause any problems, nor do trips provide new challenges. Through their trips, also this group of children explores and appreciates the relationship with the environment. However, the scope of this ‘environment’ is much wider. These children are fascinated by places where they get in touch with youngsters and adults next to the mass media environment. For example, a city centre is interesting because of the shopping possibilities. New trip destinations are more and more semi public places such as shopping centres, cinemas, etc.

18. Important issues to approach young people (7) Moreover, these places are characterised by their social and unsupervised nature where you can do what ever you like. Parental influence The change in perception is also reflected into the restraints of the parents on the autonomous mobility of their children: for the younger children these restraints refer to the way of travelling, for the older children of the secondary school, these restraints refer more to the trip destination. Modes Very difficult to say this will be the case for all CONNECT countries, even less for our specific schools, but research in Flanders at least indicated that in primary school the shares for bike and car are almost the same. In secondary schools public bus and bike are the transport modes that are used the most.

19. Important issues to approach young people (8) The change from primary to secondary school is a large step. The new (secondary) school is further from home than the primary school and the new social environment has its influence. Half of the children changes transport mode to school at the transit from primary to secondary school. Traffic safety and the parents are the two most important elements that affect the way children come to school. Transportation autonomy increases when children are in secondary school when the strong influence of the parents decreases. We also found other variables that have an effect on the transport mode choice to school: the number of children in the family, the rank of the child in the family and the number of cars in the household.

20. Important issues to approach young people (9) The main lessons learned, and something that is too often ignored: attitudes towards different transport modes. The research findings showed that older children attach great importance to the social aspect of transport modes; even more important for the girls than for the boys. Boys appreciate more the autonomous (unaccompanied) feature of a trip. In primary school the attitude towards the car is more negative than in secondary school (negative impact on the environment, insufficient physical exercise; even in first grade so this is not linked to the prospect of a being a driver soon). But pupils in primary schools use the car much more than students in secondary schools. Public transport has to combat with the unknown image, and unknown is unloved. Children that use it judge it more positive.

21. Important issues to approach young people (10) This is quite important: health and environmental reasons can convince primary school children but it is not a plus point for many adolescent: the social and autonomous aspect is what they like! Sustainable transport might be jeopardized by finger pointing adults who talk the talk but don’t walk the walk! “Use your bike or public transport”: a form of green washing by adults so they can use their cars?

22. Important issues to approach young people (11) and to keep it in your mind: PEER PEER PEER PEER PEER

23. From traffic to sustainable mobility? What 9 years can do… policy & practice. 1999 2008

24. The notice we use in CONNECT • practice based • starting from the world of youngsters themselves (not a class scholarly approach) • teenagers as partners and central theme (PEERS PEERS PEERS) (decentralised approach) • participation and process involvement as key factor and with the notion of own responsibility central (compared to pointing out fingers to others – especially adults in this case – who “do something wrong”).

25. The notice we use in CONNECT (2) • The short movies invite teenagers to make an amateur short movie about their experiences and vision about young people in traffic. • The call starts from the transport modes that youngsters use now: walking, cycling, public transport or passengers in a car but is not aimed at reaching out to them as future car owners and drivers. • With this action we wanted to stimulate teenagers to creatively think about their position in daily traffic. How can one as a young road user contribute to safe and sustainable traffic? What bothers you with the transport and traffic behaviour of peers? • The movies can be used as a modern approach that goes bottom-up, in order to start the discussion about youngsters and mobility. It is a tool, not a goal !

26. To wrap our aims up